The Latvian soprano Kristine Opolais, who has won
unanimous critical and popular praise for her lush voice and stirring
performances at opera houses worldwide, sets out to conquer new audiences this
summer with a pair of concert debuts at Tanglewood and the BBC Proms.

Kristine then kicks off a jam-packed 2013-14 opera season
with one of Verdi’s most demanding heroines--Desdemona in Otello at the Hamburg Staatsoper--before reprising several of her
signature roles (Rusalka, Jenufa, Madama Butterfly) and shining as the titular heroine of a
highly-anticipated new Covent Garden production of Manon Lescaut.

“An affectingly natural actress,” possessing a “plush
voice with a throbbing richness that lends a touch of poignancy to every phrase
she sings” (The New York Times) that
is also “lithe and precise” (Classics
Today) and “filled with colors and shadings” (Associated Press), the sensational soprano Kristi-ne Opolais’s
upcoming season will delight dedicated fans and produce a bevy of new converts.

Tanglewood audiences will get a chance to hear Kristine
intone the passionate swells of Verdi’s Requiem
on July 27 in a performance conducted by the celebrated conductor Andris
Nelsons, who has the unique distinction of being both her longtime artistic
accomplice and husband. Verdi is also on the menu at Kristine’s August 17 BBC
Proms debut, where she will perform arias from Otello (“Willow Song,” “Ave Maria”), as well as from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (“Polonaise,” “Letter
Song”), with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, also conducted by
Nelsons. She’ll perform Wagner lieder on a program also featuring Tchaikovsky’s
Romeo and Juliet Overture and
Dvorák’s joyous Symphony No. 8 for a
tantalizing trio of festival concerts with the same orchestra on August 29
(Locarno), August 31 (Menuhin Festival in Gstaad) and September 1 (Bremen
Festival - Glocke Veranstaltungs). The dynamic duo of Opolais and Nelsons teams
up again for an all-Wagner program performed with the NDR Sinfonieorchester at
the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival on August 24 and 25.

--Amanda Sweet, BuckleSweet Media

Opera Parallele
Presents First Workshop Reading of Dante De Silva’s Gesualdo, Prince of Madness June 7 at San Francisco Conservatory of
Music

Concept Designer Brian Staufenbiel debuts new
“GraphicOpera” genre.

Opera Parallèle presents the first workshop reading of
Dante De Silva’s Gesualdo, Prince of
Madness, at 7 p.m. June 7 in the Sol Joseph Recital Hall at San Francisco
Conservatory of Music. During the reading, the company will also debut the
concept of “GraphicOpera,” melding the graphic novel with operatic performance.
The two-act opera examines the sometimes flexible nature of justice through the
figure of Carlo Gesualdo, a 16th century composer who is accused of murder but
escapes prosecution because of his noble status. Los Angeles composer Dante De
Silva incorporates renaissance colors in homage to the title character by
including a theorbo, a plucked instrument of the Baroque period.

Concept designer Brian Staufenbiel, illustrator Mark
Simmons and animator Sony Green explore a new idea in bringing the music and
text of Gesualdo, Prince of Madness
to life by using a series of illustrations and animations, done in a
traditional graphic novel style, projected onto a large, central screen. This
workshop will be the first phase in Opera Parallèle's development of
GraphicOpera as a new genre with the hope that this art form will embrace the
spectrum of animated imagery that new technology enables.

Bay Area baritone Daniel Cilli leads the cast as the
heartbroken Carlo Gesualdo alongside Chris Filipowicz as his servant Orazio.
Michelle Rice plays Maria Gesualdo and Andres Ramirez, recently in Opera
Parallèle’s production of Trouble in Tahiti, plays Maria’s secret lover
Fabrizio. Maya Kherani, Nuria in Opera Parallèle’s production of Ainadamar,
portrays Leonora, Carlo’s second wife. Nikola Printz will play the servants,
Anna and Patrizia, as well as the herbalist, Artemisia. Rounding out the cast
is a female trio sung by Sarah Eve Brand, Lora Libby and Rachel Rush.

“Opera Parallèle is fearlessly committed to expanding
appreciation for contemporary opera,” said Artistic Director Nicole Paiement.
“I’ve long admired Dante De Silva and the company is thrilled to offer the
public a first glimpse at our workshop. Not only will audiences get a chance to
preview the music, but we will also be ‘previewing’ a new way of bringing the
music to life visually with the debut of GraphicOpera. This will be a sort of
laboratory experiment in the music and visual arts—another step in our process
of encouraging dialogue and opening minds to contemporary opera.”

Dante De Silva’s Gesualdo,
Prince of Madness is free and open to the public. Pre-reserved seating is
available for donors and, given the intimate nature of the venue, tickets for
the general public may be limited and are available on a first-come,
first-served basis. The world premiere workshop reading will be followed by a
question and answer session with Nicole Paiement, Brian Staufenbiel and Dante
De Silva.

Britain's Favourite
Film Critic Celebrates His 50th Birthday with a Full Orchestra and Some
Surprise Guests

Mark Kermode will join the City of Birmingham Symphony
Orchestra to celebrate his 50th birthday with four unique concerts: Cheltenham
Festival; Barbican, London; The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester; and Symphony
Hall, Birmingham.

The UK’s best known and most authorative film critic, Mark
Kermode, will celebrate his 50th birthday with a top UK orchestra as they
perform music from the films that have inspired him. From The Exorcist to Mary Poppins
expect a riot of music, plus stories from his life and career, in concerts
across the UK.

This summer, Mark, the co-host of BBC Radio 5 Live's
Kermode and Mayo's Film Review, will team up with the City of Birmingham
Symphony Orchestra at Cheltenham Festival (3 July); Barbican, London (6 July);
The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester (8 July); and Symphony Hall, Birmingham (9
July) to celebrate a life spent in the movie theatre and how particular films
have affected him so deeply.

The concerts will reflect Mark's unique and eclectic
tastes: after all, how often will you hear music from Twin Peaks and Mary Poppins
in the same evening. Taking us through the films that mean most to him, Mark
Kermode will bring us a tender theme from Silent
Running, a violent hunt from Planet
of the Apes (a film Kermode credits with teaching him everything he knows
about politics), Jonny Greenwood's hugely influential music from There Will Be Blood, the infernal strains of Peter Maxwell
Davies’s hell-raising score from The
Devils, the fandango of North By
Northwest, the sleazy cityscape of Taxi
Driver, Angelo Badalamenti's dreamy score for David Lynch's Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me and the
joyous overture to the Disney classic, Mary
Poppins (one of Kermode's all-time favourites). And a Kermode concert would
not be complete without The Exorcist,
which famously lifted a spine-tingling theme from the opening of Mike
Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. Be afraid.

All the music will be conducted by maestro Robert Ziegler,
who has a worldwide reputation as a conductor of film music and has worked
regularly in the studio with film composers such as Howard Shore (Hugo, The
Hobbit) Patrick Doyle (Hamlet, Sense and Sensibility) and Jonny Greenwood
(There Will Be Blood, Norwegian Wood).

Also joining Kermode will be a surprise guest who will
talk about their own career in the movies, and discuss the film music which has
inspired them – a selection of which will be played live by the orchestra.

Other Minds
Presents the West Coast Premiere of Rhys Chatham’s Awe-Inspiring Work for 100
Guitars, A Secret Rose, November 17
at Craneway Pavilion, Richmond, CA, June 7 and 8

Composer/guistarist Rhys Chatham will be in San Francisco
for two kick-off events: The performance of 1977 Guitar Trio (G3) at The Lab and and the G100 Roundup.

Other Minds will present the West Coast Premiere of Rhys
Chatham’s awe-inspiring work for 100 electric guitars, A Secret Rose, at 7 p.m. on Sunday, November 17 at Craneway
Pavilion, Richmond, California. Led by composer/guitarist Rhys Chatham,
credited with creating a new type of urban music by fusing early 1960s
minimalism with the relentless, elemental fury of punk rock, this large-scale
performance features an international team of section leaders working in
concert with amateur and professional guitarists from all over the Bay Area and
beyond. With an almost cult-like following akin to those who travel to hear The
Grateful Dead, Rhys Chatham is a formally trained composer whose music combines
“the drone-based minimalism of La Monte Young and Tony Conrad with the raw
energy and amplified instrumentation of punk bands like the Ramones.” (Steve
Smith, The New York Times). A Secret Rose is sponsored by a lead
grant from the Exploring Engagement Fund of the James Irvine Foundation.

To build excitement for the November 17 performance of A Secret Rose, Other Minds presents two
preview events June 7 and 8 in San Francisco. Rhys Chatham joins an all-star
cast of local Bay Area musicians on June 7 at The Lab in a performance of his
groundbreaking 1977 Guitar Trio (G3).
The participating performers will be guitarists Ava Mendoza, John Schott,
George Chen and John Krausbauer, along with Lisa Mezzacappa (bass) and Jordan
Glenn (drums). On June 8, Charles Amirkhanian will join Rhys Chatham for the
“G100 Roundup,” an exclusive event in a private Mission District art studio.
This intimate evening event will feature an in-depth interview covering his
early days as the first music director at The Kitchen in New York to his recent
large-scale guitar works and will be accompanied by rare films and audio footage
from Rhys’ extensive career, including footage from his compositions for
electric guitar orchestras. The G100 Roundup event will also be an opportunity
for fans to find out how they can get involved in A Secret Rose.

Tickets for the June kick-off events are now on sale at
www.thelab.org for June 7 and g100.eventbrite.com for June 8. Those interested
in participating as one of the 100 guitarists in November should visit
otherminds.org to apply online. Applications and specific information on
instrument requirements will be open June 15.

--Karen Ames Communications

American Composers
Orchestra Names Derek Bermel New Artistic Director and Renews George Manahan’s
Music Directorship

American Composers Orchestra (ACO) announced last night at
its Spring Benefit at Tribeca Rooftop that composer and clarinetist Derek
Bermel will be the orchestra’s new Artistic Director, commencing with the
2013-14 season. Bermel has been ACO’s Creative Advisor since 2009, and succeeds
composer Robert Beaser who has been ACO’s Artistic Director since 2000 and was
ACO’s Artistic Advisor from 1993. Bermel joins Music Director George Manahan,
who has just renewed his contract with ACO for an unprecedented five years, in
leading the ensemble in its mission to be a catalyst for the creation of new
orchestral music.

ACO Board Co-Chair Astrid Baumgardner said of Bermel’s
appointment, “Multi-talented composer, clarinetist, and artistic leader Derek
Bermel is one of the beacons of today's music scene. With his creativity,
intelligence and charm, the orchestra is poised to scale new heights and make
an important contribution to the contemporary music scene.” Board Co-Chair
Annette McEvoy added, “Derek has the talent, know-how, and creativity to
present compelling contemporary music for our dynamic audience, and I am
thrilled that he will be leading us into the future.”

Grammy-nominated composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel has
been widely hailed for his creativity, theatricality, and virtuosity. In
addition to his new appointment with ACO, he will continue to serve as Director
of Copland House's Cultivate! Program for emerging composers. Bermel, an
“eclectic with wide open ears” (Toronto
Star), is recognized as a dynamic and unconventional curator of concert
series that spotlight the composer as performer. Alongside his international
studies of ethnomusicology and orchestration, an ongoing engagement with other
musical cultures has become part of the fabric and force of his compositional
language.

Bermel first came to ACO's attention in 1994 as a
participant in the Whitaker Emerging Composers Readings (now the Underwood New
Music Readings) with his piece Dust Dances. ACO has since commissioned and
premiered Bermel’s work on numerous occasions, including his first professional
orchestral commission and Carnegie Hall debut in 1998 with Voices, a clarinet
concerto. ACO also commissioned and premiered A Shout, A Whisper, and a Trace (2009); Elixir (2006); and The
Migration Series with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center
Orchestra, which premiered to sold-out audiences in 2006. Bermel was ACO’s
Music Alive Composer-in-Residence from 2006-2009, joining ACO's board and
becoming the orchestra's Creative Advisor in 2009. In his role as Creative
Advisor, Bermel excelled at programming ACO’s Orchestra Underground series at
Carnegie Hall and ACO’s citywide new music festival SONiC, Sounds of a New
Century, in 2011, which featured 21st century music by 120 emerging composers.
Bermel has also been active in several of ACO's composer development initiatives
including serving as a mentor for the Underwood New Music Readings and EarShot
programs, and serving as an artist-faculty member for the Jazz Composers
Orchestra Institute.

--Christina Jensen PR

Young People’s
Chorus of New York City Spring Concert Tickets

Two Performances For YPC Families and Friends Spring
Family Concert - Saturday, June 8, 2013.

Tickets:

3:30 p.m. matinee tickets -$15, $25, and $50.

7:00 p.m. evening tickets - $20, $30, and $60.

All tickets are available at the 92nd Street Y box office
or by calling 212-415-5500.

Don't miss the renowned showmanship, poise, and
professionalism of all of the YPC choristers in music ranging from classical,
pop, and jazz to folk, gospel, and world music. The 3:30 matinee will include a
cameo performance by the young singers in YPC's new after-school program, Young
People's Chorus at Washington Heights (YPCWH)

The 7 p.m. evening performance comes to a poignant close
with YPC's annual celebratory send-off to its graduating seniors as they leave
the chorus to embark on their college careers and a new chapter in their young
lives.

Mobile Fidelity
began life as a producer of half-speed remastered vinyl discs. When CD’s came along,
they kept pace in the audiophile arena by transferring music to gold discs.
These days, having largely moved away from gold discs and on to Super Audio
CDs, they have found some good source material in the performances of Walter
Susskind, such as this one where he conducts Gustav Holst’s The Planets with the St. Louis Symphony
Orchestra.

The first and only
time other time I heard this recording was almost thirty years ago when it
first appeared on a Vox/Turnabout LP in the mid Seventies. It was during the
quadraphonic era, and Vox had intended for listeners to play it back in four
channels. But I heard it at that time in ordinary two-channel stereo where the
sound appeared a mite blurry and noisy to me. Not being too impressed by the
sonics at that time, I quickly forgot about the performance. Unlike before,
however, I was able to hear it in cleaner, clearer stereo on this Mobile
Fidelity SACD, and I regret not having given the performance more credit back
then.

Mo-Fi is producing
hybrid two-channel/multi-channel discs, so a person can listen to The Planets with or without an SACD
player or rear channels. I listened in two-channel stereo through a Sony SACD
player, where the sound now appeared better focused, and Susskind’s
interpretation of this colorfully descriptive score thoroughly delighted me.

“Mars” begins things
with a zesty, saucy bravado. I’ve read that Holst wanted this “Bringer of War”
to ridicule the stupidity of war, and surely Susskind’s zippy rendition conveys
this thought. Nevertheless, it’s the slower movements that most impressed me,
“Venus” and “Saturn” and, of course, the ethereal “Neptune,” with their grace
and refinement. Still, it’s “Uranus” that always seems to me the centerpiece of
the work, the movement that combines the strongest tensions, the biggest
outbursts of emotion, and the softest moments of repose. Susskind handles it
superbly, the pacing immaculate. This is quite a nice reading, actually.

The sound, as I’ve said, is a marked improvement over the
old vinyl. But one must play it somewhat loudly to enjoy it to the full, in all
its spacious grandeur. At a soft or even moderate playback level, there seems
to be a degree of cloudiness to the proceedings. Yet at volume, the sound is
reasonably firm and well delineated. On the minus side, there is a minor
feeling of compartmentalization about it, an absence of ultimate depth, some
minor softness about the dynamics, and a lack of truly deep bass, all of which
could intrude upon one’s complete surrender to a willing suspension of
disbelief. Be that as it may, I’m sure it sounds realistic enough, overall, to
please most folks, probably close to the original master tape. It’s an
enjoyable disc, and I’m nitpicking.

The only flaw is that since my writing this review, Mo-Fi
seems to have discontinued the disc. Alas, if you’re interested in it, you may
have to do a search.

When you’ve got a good thing, there’s nothing for it but
to make it better. That appears to be the philosophy of Winston Ma, president
and owner of FIM (First Impression Music), who supervises the CD remastering of
classic older recordings to today’s most-exacting audiophile standards. And
what more classic a jazz album is there than Sextet, the celebrated 1958 recording with the all-star cast. To
put it mildly, it’s never sounded better for home playback.

The players involved are Cal Tjader, vibes; Stan Getz,
tenor sax; Vince Guaraldi, piano; Eddie Duran, guitar; Scott Lafaro, bass; and
Billy Higgins, drums. Of course, not all of them were at the time as well known
as they are today; but, still, it was a remarkable feat for Fantasy Records to
gather them together for a one-time recording shot. No one figured just how
memorable or how historic the occasion would be.

The session begins with “For All We Know,” which features
Tjader on vibes and Getz eventually coming in on sax, the others providing
accompaniment. It’s a good opening number to showcase the primary stars, and
it’s wonderfully breezy and beautifully played. “My Buddy” follows, with even
more from the bassist and pianist, again with Tjader taking the lead on vibes.
The players had never performed before as a group, yet their contributions are
so seamless, you’d think they had been working together for years.

And so it goes. This is jazz for people who say they don’t
care much for jazz. I mean, how could one resist so affecting a number as their
rendition of “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” from the then-new stage
musical My Fair Lady? It’s all quite
easy to grow accustomed to when every member of the ensemble is so thoroughly
professional and skilled his position.

While much of the music is laid-back and genial, there is
a particular track that finds the group at its rollicking best: a fast dance
called “Ginza Samba.” They swing in the best sense, backing each other with
supportive figures in a remarkably able fashion. Likewise, after starting the
album in relatively lyric form, the fellows do the final three numbers up
tempo. Pick your mood.

For fun, see if you can make out the words whispered in
the background. Interestingly, too, there were no rehearsals before the
recording date, no alternates, and second takes. Although the album lasts only
forty-two minutes and forty-seven seconds, you can’t help but have a great time
with it.

Fantasy Records made the album at Marines Memorial
Auditorium, San Francisco, California, in February of 1958. FIM (First
Impression Music) and their subsidiary LIM (Lasting Impression Music) brought
the music to the present audiophile UltraHD CD in 2013, using the latest
advances in 32-bit technology for the transfer. Moreover, as it seems that
every time producer Winston Ma releases a new series of discs, he’s added some
new and innovative engineering, this time we get something called Pure
Reflection, or as Ma calls it, putting the two words together, PureFlection.
It’s an improved disc reproduction process that makes replication even more
precise, and which Ma goes on to explain in several pages of detail in the
disc’s accompanying notes. Let it suffice that the technology seems to work,
and we get what Ma claims is a pure reflection of the original. The disc sounds
darned good, so I don’t doubt him.

The modestly close miking used in the original recording
produces a wide stereo spread, and certainly the high-definition UltraHD and
PureFlection systems produce pure, clean sound, no matter that the master tape
is over half a century old. It was obviously good to begin with, and it sounds
good now. The disc opens with Tjader on
vibes, which ring out clearly and dynamically. When he’s joined by Getz on sax,
we hear how really lifelike the instruments sound. Percussion, including piano,
likewise display excellent transient response, and both ends of the frequency
spectrum appear well extended. Just as important, there is a fair amount of
depth to the group, with air and space around the instruments. A good thing
just keeps getting better.

FIM/LIM have packaged the disc in a glossy, foldout,
hardbound book-like case, with notes fastened to the inside and the disc itself
inserted into static-proof liner, further enclosed by a thin cardboard sleeve.
The liner and sleeve make sense for taking the best possible care of the disc,
although it can be something of a pain trying to get the liner back into the
sleeve properly if you’re as clumsy and nearsighted as I am. It’s a small price
to pay for dust and scratch protection.

And speaking of price, don’t forget that these audiophile
products aren’t cheap. Don’t say I didn’t warn you in advance against sticker
shock.

Mozart wrote a ton of divertimenti (well, several dozen at
least), light music intended largely as background entertainment for social
gatherings--dinners, parties, and the like--for families that could afford
them. The two we find here, Nos. 11
and 17, are fairly prominent examples
of the genre, conducted by the late Helmut Muller-Bruhl and his Cologne Chamber
Orchestra. Maestro Muller-Bruhl died just a few months after making the
recording, so it’s something of a swan song for him. He went out in style.

The Divertimento No.
11 in D major, K. 251, begins the program.
Mozart wrote it in 1776, probably for the name-day of his sister
Nannerl. It’s a relatively small work in six movements, scored for an oboe, a
pair of horns, two violins, viola, double bass, and strings; and it’s filled
with the usual series of charming melodies we would expect from the young
composer. Muller-Bruhl provides a warm, sunny, yet highly refined
interpretation of the music. This is old-school Mozart, not your slingshot
period-instruments presentation.

Nevertheless, this is not to suggest there is anything
staid or stodgy about the performance. It is chipper, outgoing, and thoroughly
delightful. After giving us a frothy opening Allegro, Muller-Bruhl offers up the first of two highly polished
minuets. Between them we find a particularly graceful Andantino in a flowing dotted rhythm. The piece concludes with a
spirited Rondeau and a march in the
French manner.

Mozart composed the Divertimento
No. 17 in D major, K. 334, in 1780 for the university graduation of a
wealthy family friend. The piece is almost twice the length of No. 11 and displays a degree of maturity
and invention somewhat lacking in the earlier work. Again, Muller-Bruhl gives
us a gracious, friendly, cultivated reading, with an especially felicitous pair
of Menuettos, things we would expect
of dinner music. However, this is not merely background music; no Mozart could
be. These well-developed musical arrangements verge on symphonies; in fact, you
might even consider them overdeveloped symphonies, with their six-movement
design. Whatever you call them, they’re quite entertaining in Muller-Bruhl’s
capable hands.

So, what Muller-Bruhl gives us are cultured, what some
people might call sedate Mozart interpretations, old-school Mozart you could
say, with accomplished playing from the Cologne Chamber Orchestra. To add
another plus to the affair, the total disc time is over seventy-three minutes,
something we don’t always find in this age of frugal recordings. Anyway,
if some of today’s more frenetic
performances tire you, Muller-Bruhl’s more gentle approach may be right up your
alley.

Naxos recorded the music at the Deutschlandfunk
Kammermusiksaal, Cologne, Germany, in September of 2011. Typical of so many
Naxos products, the sound is warm and full, with a slightly soft, veiled
midrange and a slightly limited frequency and dynamic range. Still, these
qualities are not severe and may be just what the music needs; they provide an
easygoing atmosphere for Muller-Bruhl’s easygoing style. The moderately
close-up miking allows for a big sound, too, very wide and acceptably deep.

The National Philharmonic Chorale, led by Artistic
Director Stan Engebretson, will present Carl Orff’s most famous work, Carmina Burana, on Saturday, June 8 at 8
pm and on Sunday, June 9 at 3 pm at the Music Center at Strathmore,
5301Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda, MD
20852. The program also includes Three
Poems by Henri Michaux by Witold Lutos?awski. In addition to the nearly 200
voice all-volunteer chorale, the concert will feature soloists Audrey Luna
(soprano); Robert Baker (tenor); Leon Williams (baritone) and the Choralis
Youth Chorus (Cantus Primo).

Orff’s rousing Carmina
Burana blends secular medieval texts with seductive melodies and
spellbinding rhythms. The composer’s popular 1936 oratorio, a setting of
medieval poems about life, love and morals, features the powerful and pulsing
sound of chorus and orchestra that you now hear in many movies, videogames and
on TV. In fact, the famous opening and closing movement, O Fortuna, has been used in such popular movies as Glory, The Hunt for Red October, and Cheaper
by the Dozen.

Lutosawski, Poland’s most celebrated composer of the last
century, traced his musical roots to Debussy and Stravinsky. These influences
are heard in his evocative 1963 work, Three
Poems by Henri Michaux, for chorus, strings and percussion, in a stirring
Washington-area premiere.

About the Soloists:

Soprano Audrey Luna’s 2012-13 season engagements include
Ariel in The Tempest with the
Metropolitan Opera, Zerbinetta in Ariadne
auf Naxos with Fort Worth Opera, and Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte with Utah Opera. Recent
season highlights include Queen of the
Night with Lyric Opera of Chicago; Madame Mao in Nixon in China with Lyric Opera of Kansas City; Ariel with Festival
Opéra de Québec, also with Orchestra Dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia,
directed by the composer; and Najade in Ariadne
auf Naxos with the Metropolitan Opera.

Tenor Robert Baker is a central figure in the Washington
area classical music scene. He has been featured by the Washington Concert
Opera in numerous roles totaling more than 250 performances. He made his
Metropolitan Opera debut in Prokfiev’s War
and Peace, which he also recorded during the Spoleto Festival’s production
in 1999.

The Choralis Foundation, founded by Artistic Director
Gretchen Kuhrmann in 2000, is dedicated to nurturing a passion for choral music
in the greater Washington metropolitan area. Its choruses--the Choralis Youth
Choirs (Cantus Choirs)—Cantus Liberi (grades 3 5), Cantus Medius (grades 6-8),
and the select choir heard this evening, Cantus Primo (grades 5-9)—are the most
recent fulfillment of Choralis’ mission to instill a love of choral music
through excellence in choral performance and educational outreach to
youth. Details about Choralis programs
and concert season may be found at www.choralis.org.

--Deborah Birnbaum, National Philharmonic

Bang on a Can
Announces Clarinetist Ken Thomson Is a New Member of the Bang on a Can
All-Stars

Bang on a Can, New York’s innovative and energetic
champion of new music, officially announces the new clarinetist for its
“All-Star” lineup today. The Bang on a Can All-Stars have become a singular
vehicle for visionary composition over the course of the last 20 years, and
with the addition of Ken Thomson will continue to set the standard for exciting
and virtuosic performances.

Bang on a Can co-founder Julia Wolfe welcomed Ken Thomson
with this statement: “We are thrilled to welcome high voltage clarinetist Ken
Thomson to the Bang on a Can All-Stars! This past year, during our national
search, we played with stunning clarinetists from all over the country. We were
honored to share the stage with so many great performers. After a search far
and wide, in the end we came back home to one of our own. Ken has been a part
of the Bang on a Can family for many years. As a founding member of Asphalt
Orchestra (our rad street band) and as faculty at the Bang on a Can Summer
Festival at MASS MoCA, Ken has graced us with his dynamic and physical
performances.

He has already jumped right in with a European tour taking
place right now through Belgium, Sweden, the UK, and Iceland, to be followed by
his first hometown performance as an official All-Stars at the Bang on a Can
Marathon on Sunday June 16.”

Ken Thomson is a Brooklyn-based clarinetist, saxophonist,
and composer. In demand as a composer and freelancer in many settings, he moves
quickly between genres and scenes, bringing a fiery intensity and emotional
commitment to every musical situation; Time Out New York called him “the
hardest-working saxophonist in new-music show business.”

Consistent leadership in the prestigious competition
showcases a strong chamber music program.

The Music Institute of Chicago has reaffirmed its status
as one of the best schools in the nation for chamber music study: Quartet
Lumiére, a Music Institute Academy string quartet, has won the coveted First
Place Gold Medal and a $2,300 scholarship in the Junior Division of the 2013
Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, which took place May 10–12 in
South Bend, Indiana.

Coached by Academy faculty member Marko Dreher, Quartet
Lumiére was Overall Winner in the open division of the 2013 Discover National
Chamber Music Competition, 1st Prize Winner of the Society of American
Musicians 2013 Jules M. Laser Chamber Music Competition, and Grand Award Winner
and first place in the Strings and Piano Division of the first annual A.N. and
Pearl G. Barnett Chamber Music Competition held in April 14 at Merit School of
Music. Most recently, the Quartet performed a pre-concert for the Chicago
Philharmonic Orchestra and for internationally acclaimed musician Lang Lang at
the Music Institute’s 83rd Anniversary Gala.

2013 Fischoff Competition

Founded in 1973 in South Bend, Indiana, the Fischoff
National Chamber Music Competition began with Joseph E. Fischoff and fellow
members of the South Bend Chamber Music Society seeking to find an innovative
way of encouraging young people to pursue chamber music study and performance.
Since then, the competition, presented by the Fischoff National Chamber Music
Association, has grown to become the largest chamber music competition in the
world and one of the most illustrious classical music prizes attainable today.
During the past 40 years, more than 5,700 musicians have participated in the
competition, many of whom have gone on to distinguished careers in music
performance and education. In addition, Fischoff is the only national chamber
music competition with both Senior (ages 18–35) and Junior Divisions (age 18
and younger).

--Jill Chukerman, JAC Communications

Listen: Life With Classical Music
Releases Its Summer 2013 Issue Features Béla Fleck, Summer Festivals, Artists
Inspired by Art, Viola Jokes, and Van Cliburn, and more

While you’re (hopefully) lying by the pool this summer, Listen: Life with Classical Music is the
ultimate guide to summer music festivals and endless entertainment. From
mixology at the Metropolitan Opera to Jesus Christ’s operatic debut to the
effect of the ubiquitous viola joke, this issue will get you through the hot
summer months.

This year, classical music lost a lion-hearted hero: Van
Cliburn, the Texan who conquered Russia, who graces the magazine’s cover.
Editor-in-Chief Ben Finane ruminates on Van Cliburn’s rise as an unforeseen
ambassador with a win at Moscow’s inaugural Tchaikovsky competition.

A print quarterly hailed by Library Journal as one of the
best new magazines of 2009, Listen
Magazine is the American voice of classical music. Now entering its fifth
year of publication, Listen delivers
exclusive interviews with the world’s top musicians, feature articles, think
pieces, festival coverage, insight into the masterworks and the unsung works of
the classical canon, as well as recommendations on record, on screen, in print
and online. No one covers the breadth and depth of classical music with greater
elegance and zeal than Listen.

Everybody needs a gimmick, I remarked the last time I
reviewed an album by David Greilsammer. That was Conversations, a disc that offered four segments comprised of three
piano selections each, two Baroque masterpieces as the outer movements and a
modern work in the middle. It was clever, and Greilsammer pulled it off pretty
well. With this follow-up album, In-Between,
Greilsammer provides several works by Mozart as a young man, a composer
“in-between” his earliest youth and his adulthood, along with the premiere
recording of a modern contemporary piece called In-Between by Swiss composer and musician Denis Schuler. While
Greilsammer again handles the music quite well, I’m not sure he and his
producer needed the “in-between” gimmick to sell it.

Anyway, David Greilsammer is a prizewinning pianist as
well as the Principal Conductor of the Geneva Chamber Orchestra. Born in
Jerusalem, Israel, he studied there at the Rubin Academy before entering the
Juliard School in New York and making his solo debut in 2004. Apparently, one
of the things audiences have enjoyed are his recitals juxtaposing Baroque and
contemporary music, as he did in his earlier program. Now, he tries a similarly
themed approach to Mozart.

Greilsammer says of the In-Between album, “Each of the pieces represents a different
in-between situation, all guiding us towards the violent imaginary storm that
occurs in Mozart’s heart. Once we have arrived inside this secret world, we
suddenly find ourselves facing a battle between opposing forces: light and
darkness, the human and the divine, childhood and adulthood, conservatism and
innovation, solitude and the collective, love and hatred, past and present,
dream and reality, father and mother.” I have only an inkling what he means, he
gets so carried away with his highfalutin rhetoric. Fortunately, Greilsammer’s
vague thematic connections cannot displace his excellent execution of the
music, which sounds delightful.

The program leads off with Mozart’s Symphony No. 23 in D major, K. 181, written in 1773 when the
composer was seventeen. Since it’s such a youthful work, that’s the way
Greilsammer conducts it--youthfully, with plenty of exuberant energy. The
symphony contains only three movements, in the Italian style of the day, and,
coincidentally, Mozart wrote it after his third trip to Italy. It’s very brief,
all three movements comprising less than ten minutes: fast-slow-fast, and more
like an overture, really. Greilsammer has fun with it, even though the second
movement isn’t so much fun as it is emphatically dramatic. The finale is ablaze
with action, which Greilsammer appears to delight in.

Next, we get Mozart’s Piano
Concerto No. 9 in E-flat major, K. 271 “Jeunehomme,” which he wrote in 1777
at the age of twenty-one. Here, Greilsammer both conducts the orchestra and
plays the piano, and it’s also here that Greilsammer proves his worth. The
piece has a delightful charm about it, and even if Greilsammer does go at it at
a lickety-split pace, he never loses track of either the pulse of the music or
the pleasures of the piano’s interactions with the orchestra. Meanwhile, the
orchestra provides a flawless dialogue with the piano.

Then, after a typically rambunctious first movement, we
get a surprisingly solemn and soul-searching second-movement Andantino that seems to come out of left
field and which Greilsammer performs with great sensitivity. The final movement
is also surprising in that it contains a lovely minuetto right in the middle of
an otherwise presto presentation. It’s like a miniature concerto unto itself,
and again Greilsammer impresses us with his spirited direction and virtuoso
performance.

To conclude the program we find two passages from Mozart’s
Thamos, Konig in Agypten, K. 345,
another early work, interrupted between passages by Denis Schuler’s In-Between, written in 2010, and,
finally, the aria “Venga pur, minacci e frema” from Mozart’s youthful opera Mitradate, re di Ponto, K. 87, which he
wrote around 1770 when he was only in his mid teens. Although the modern
Schuler work strikes an odd note alongside the Mozart, I suppose that’s the
point. Schuler tells us he intended it to sound like breathing, the sound going
in and out. Fair enough; but there seems little connection with Mozart outside
of Schuler’s title coinciding with Greilsammer’s. In any case, I would rather
have heard two longer Mozart pieces on the disc than the one longer work and
four shorter ones, but we have what we have, and it’s all pretty good.

Sony recorded the music at La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland
in 2011, and they did a good job of it, too. The midrange is clear and taut,
with an exemplary transient response. Highs sound reasonably well extended, and
while the bass doesn’t need much low end, it’s there when necessary. The
orchestra displays a realistic depth of image as well as being suitably wide.
In the Concerto, the piano seems
ideally positioned just slightly ahead of the orchestra, and even if it tends
to change in size from time to time, it is hardly noticeable. A very light,
warm, ambient bloom complements the music making nicely.

Naxos has always
offered good value for the classical buyer’s dollar, as this album of Grieg’s
music demonstrates. The performances and sound may not rank with the absolute
best, but they’re close enough for most folks, I’m sure, and the seventy-one
minutes of playing time provide plenty to listen to.

The opening movement
of Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A
minor, a staple of the piano concerto repertoire and therefore having many
alternative rivals, is famous for its dramatic opening drum roll and cascading
crescendos from the piano. Pianist Havard Gimse, Maestro Bjarte Engeset, the
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and the Naxos engineers nicely capture the
theatrical effect of this opening, and, indeed, the whole of the first movement
follows closely the excitement set out in the beginning. Throughout the work,
Gimse follows this pattern in exemplary fashion. Tempos remain moderate but
flexible; intonation is nuanced; transitions, as into the second subject, sound
smooth and fluid; and Gimse seems always sensitive to Grieg’s designs.

The second movement
comes across wonderfully hushed and continues to portray the beauty of nature
as Grieg intended. It’s in the final movement that the Concerto itself begins to suffer, as the finale has never seemed to
hang together well with the rest of the piece. The last movement is like a
miniature concerto unto itself, very folksy in its outer sections and sweetly
quiet in its middle. But it doesn’t have much to do with anything that went
before it, and neither Gimse nor conductor Engeset can do much about that. In
fact, by playing up the extremes, the performers only make matters worse. Oh,
well; it’s not a serious complaint.

Accompanying the Concerto is the brief tone poem “In
Autumn” and the suite of folk tunes called “Symphonic Dances.” They also come
off well, very colorfully and pictorially presented, although I doubt that most
buyers would be attracted to the disc by anything but the Concerto.

The Naxos sound is
excellent in terms of the piano tone in the Concerto,
very vibrant, clean, and alive. As for the orchestral sound, it’s a little less
so, both in the accompaniment to the Concerto
and in the coupling. I found it a bit lean in the bass and not entirely
transparent in the midrange. Still, it’s more than adequate, broad and
spacious.

Finally, I should
mention that as good a bargain as this Naxos release is, one can still buy the
two-disc, mid-priced Philips set that includes one of the best Grieg Concerto performances of all, with
Stephen Kovacevich and Colin Davis, along with piano concertos from Schumann
(Kovacevich), Addinsell (Dichter), Tchaikovsky (Argerich), and Brahms
(Kovacevich again), making the Philips set one of the ultimate great bargains
in the history of recorded music.

The folks at HDTT (High Definition Tape Transfers) usually
take recordings that are either out of the catalogue or out of copyright and
transfer them to CD from commercial tapes or vinyl discs in audiophile sound.
This time they did something slightly different, taking 16-bit Betamax master
tape and converting and processing it for compact disc. The results are up to
HDTT’s typically high sonic standards, and the performance by Maestro Christoph
Eschenbach and the Houston Symphony, heretofore commercially unreleased, is
quite good.

Gustav Mahler wrote the Symphony No. 1 in D major in 1888, premiering it in 1889, calling
it at first a symphonic poem rather than a symphony and temporarily, at least,
giving it the nickname “Titan.” Within a few years, however, he revised it to
the four-movement piece we have today and dropped the “Titan” designation. The
work’s popularity soared at the beginning of the stereo age, along with that of
the Fourth Symphony, possibly because
the composer scored the First for a
very large orchestra, and with its soaring melodies, enormous impact, and
dramatic contrasts it makes a spectacular impression on the listener. Plus, the
First and Fourth are Mahler’s shortest symphonies, making them ideal for home
listening.

Anyway, you’ll recall that for the Symphony No. 1 Mahler said he was trying to describe a protagonist
facing life, with a progression beginning with the lighter moments of youth and
proceeding to the darker years of maturity. In the first movement, “Spring
without End,” we see Mahler’s youthful hero in the symbolic stirring of Nature
before a long spring. In the second-movement Scherzo, “With Full Sail,” we find Mahler in one of his early
mock-sentimental moods, displaying an exuberance that he may have meant as
ironic. In the third movement we get an intentionally awkward funeral march
depicting a hunter’s fairy-tale burial, which comes off as a typical Mahler
parody. It may represent the hero’s first glimpse of death or maybe Mahler’s
own recollection of a youthful encounter with the death of a loved one. The
movement has long been one of the Mahler’s most controversial, with audiences
still debating just what the composer was up to. Then, in the finale, Mahler
conveys the panic “of a deeply wounded heart,” as his central figure faces the
suffering of life and fate. Still, Mahler was a spiritual optimist and wanted
Man to triumph in the end. In the final twenty minutes or so, Mahler pulls out
all the stops and puts the orchestra into full swing, making it an audiophile
favorite for home playback.

Maestro Eschenbach has proved himself a sturdy conductor.
Expect no idiosyncratic or revelatory performance here but a good, solid,
serious-minded, highly refined one. Of course, I suppose a person could
question the need for yet another straightforward interpretation of Mahler’s
score with so many emotionally charged recordings already available from the
likes of Mackerras (EMI), Horenstein (Unicorn), Solti (Decca), Kubelik (DG),
Bernstein (DG), Walter (Sony), Haitink (Philips), Tennstedt (EMI), Luisi (WS),
and others. There is, however, something one can say for a performance that is
all Mahler, with few excesses or exaggerations, and a recording that sounds as
good as this one.

In the first movement Eschenbach takes his time with the
morning mists and the coming of spring. Mahler marked the opening “slowly,
sluggish or dragging,” and while “sluggish” and “dragging” can seem somewhat
derogatory, I’m sure the composer didn’t mean them that way, nor does
Eschenbach “drag” anything out. But, yes, Eschenbach’s account of the music
does appear more leisurely than most other accounts. When the main theme enters
some five or six minutes in, it has an appropriately youthful bounce.
Eschenbach also shows a propensity for emphasizing contrasts by bringing the
orchestra down to a whisper in quieter passages, making those big Mahlerian
outbursts appear all the more earthshaking. So, even though Eschenbach may be a
tad more relaxed than many other conductors here, you can’t say the performance
lacks requisite thrills.

In the second movement the conductor moves implacably
forward, not too quickly yet with enough momentum to keep listeners on their
toes, so to speak. Then he introduces some heady tempo changes to keep everyone
just a little off balance. Even so, the music is lovely in the Landler section
especially.

The third-movement funeral march could have advanced at a
little faster pace, and this is the only part of the performance where I
thought Eschenbach’s reading seemed a touch undernourished and under
characterized. Be that as it may, the music comes off as bizarre as ever,
particularly in the second half.

In the finale, Mahler appears to ask if life’s upheavals
truly come to a resolution in the hero’s victory over life’s tribulations, or
if the triumph is illusory, a temporary conquest, as ironic as the earlier
funeral march. You’ll hear nothing undernourished about Eschenbach’s reading
here. He unleashes his Houston players in a flurry of power and excitement.
Mahler wanted a stormily agitated and energetic feeling from the music, and the
conductor provides it in aces, aided by a bass drum that sounds as though it
could do some serious woofer damage if played too carelessly loud.

In all, Eschenbach offers up a more cultured, more lyrical
Mahler First than we often hear.
Although he lets the music speak eloquently for itself, there is much refined
beauty in the conductor’s rendition of this familiar score.

HDTT transferred the music from an original 16-bit Betamax
master, using a Sony PCM501ES digital processor feeding an Antelope Audio
Eclipse converter and transformed to 24/96 resolution. With minimal miking (two
Neumann KM83 microphones across the front of the orchestra), the recordist made
the Betamax tape live at Jones Hall, Houston, Texas, in 1987.

Betamax?, I hear some of you asking yourselves. Yes,
Betamax, which was quite a good recording format, even if it didn’t yield the
bit rates of today’s digital masters. Regardless, the folks at HDTT do such a
good job transferring it for today’s home use, it doesn’t matter where they got
it. Believe me, it will satisfy most demanding audiophiles. The giant bass
whacks alone will please most listeners; then add in a wide dynamic range, a
very smooth, very extended frequency range, sharp transient attacks, and a
broad stereo spread, and you get some pleasing effects. What’s more, the
recording exhibits a good sense of orchestral depth and a fine,
natural-sounding midrange transparency, making it all the more lifelike and
attractive. But it is a live recording, so expect an inevitable outburst of
applause at the end. That said, the audience is generally quiet during the
performance, even when the music fades into almost silent intervals. In all,
excellent sound.

For further
information about the various formats, configurations, and prices of HDTT
products, you can visit their Web site at
http://www.highdeftapetransfers.com/storefront.php.

So, who is Carlos Chavez, whose Piano Concerto is the centerpiece of this Cedille disc?
Regrettably, I must admit that I had never heard of him before now, which only
demonstrates how little I know. Carlos Antonio de Padua Chávez y Ramírez
(1899-1978) was a Mexican composer, conductor, educator, and journalist, the
founder and director of the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico, the very
group who perform on this album. Chavez wrote symphonies, quartets, sonatas,
incidental music, and concertos, and he was among the most influential
composers of his day.

Fortunately, I can say I have heard of pianist Jorge
Federico Osorio, who performs the Piano
Concerto along with several solo pieces on the disc. Osorio is a piano
virtuoso of international fame, and in my experience he has never demonstrated
anything but sensitive, immaculate, committed, passionate playing in his work. It was a pleasure
listening to him on the Cedille disc, and even though I had never heard any of
the music before, he made it appear vibrant and entertaining.

As I say, the centerpiece is Chavez’s Piano Concerto, written in 1940. Now, here’s the thing: If you’re
looking for something Latin-inflected, this may not be what you want. While the
booklet note says that Chavez adhered to local tradition and borrowed from
indiginous native culture, I could hardly detect it. The fact is, there is more
Stravinsky here than anything Hispanic or Native American; however, as Chavez’s
style is to create constantly shifting dissonances, it’s hard to tell what
might be buried in all the notes.

Anyway, there seemed to me to be as many Asian-oriented
passages as anything else, at least in the first few minutes. Now, here’s the
thing: You may find it as complex and scintillating as critics did at the
premiere or as cacophonous as audiences did, which may explain why the piece
has gotten so little attention since. Nevertheless, as a modernist, Chavez used
cacophony as a part of his technique, so you live with it.

Although I had no other recording of the Concerto with which to compare this one,
I can’t imagine another surpassing Osorio’s way with it. His playing is full of
intense, nervous energy, which no doubt the Chavez work requires. There is
nothing Romantic or sentimental, either, not in Chavez’s music and not in
Osorio’s performance.

What we get here is an abundance of sharp contrasts and
vibrant rhythms, with a good deal of percussion and flute backing up Osorio’s
piano. But it’s always Osorio’s piano that is front and center in the music,
with Osorio mining a seemingly inexhaustible fund of accents, textures,
nuances, and brief flurries of melody.

Chavez follows the momentous first movement with a rather
outgoing slow one, largely scored for piano, harp, and reeds. Again, it’s
Osorio who rightly dominates, his playing always keeping the listener intently
aware that this is music of an original kind, strongly characterful, but,
again, never romanticized or nostalgic. Then, with the finale, we’re back to
the cacophony of the first movement, where Osorio dazzles with his gymnastic
finger work. It’s quite a bravura piece of music with a performance by Osorio,
Maestro Miguel Prieto, and the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Mexico to match.
Whether you’ll like it or not is another question.

Also on the program are three solo piano pieces, the first
of which is Chavez’s Meditacion, an
early work from 1918. As the name implies, it’s contemplative, sounding rather
Debussy-like in its quiet, dreamy way. Osorio makes sure, though, that we don’t
dismiss it out of hand as lightweight, and his alternating dynamism brings out
the work’s more-creative development.

Next, there is Muros
Verdes (“Green Wall,” 1951) by Jose Pablo Moncayo (1912-1958), a Mexican
pianist, percussionist, music teacher, composer, and conductor. As with Meditacion, Muros Verdes comes across
with an easygoing stillness. Then, the album ends with Variations on an Original Theme (2007) by the contemporary Mexican
composer Samuel Zyman (b. 1956). It exhibits a remarkable variety of fast,
slow, agitated, relaxed, and vibrant characteristics. Needless to say, Osorio
puts his heart into it, and while it can sound somewhat as cacophonous as
Chavez’s Concerto, it also sounds
richly expressive.

Producer and engineer Bogdan Zawistowski and engineer
Humberto Teran recorded the Concerto
in 2011 at Sala Nezahualcoyotl, Centro Cultural Universitario UNAM, Mexico; and
producer James Ginsburg and engineer Bill Maylone recorded the additional solo
pieces in 2012 at the Fay and Daniel Levin Performance Studio at 98.7 WFMT,
Chicago. The miking in the Concerto
ideally integrates the piano and orchestra, even if the modest distance
employed can result in a slightly recessed sound if played back too softly. The
midrange is smooth and natural, without losing too much detail, the hall
imparting a faint, pleasant glow to the music. At an appropriate playback level
the sound is nigh-well perfect, with wonderful percussion effects. In the solo
pieces, we hear a slightly closer, more-dynamic piano sound, near ideal.

Twenty-three singers, five apprentice coaches and one
apprentice stage director, representing six different countries, will
participate in the 56th season of the Merola Opera Program from May 28 to
August 17, 2013. More than 1000 artists vied for the 29 coveted spots in the
2013 summer festival, which is offered free of charge for all participants.
Selected through an extensive world-wide audition and application process,
nearly one third of this season’s artists come from countries outside the
United States, representing six countries: United States, Canada, Iran,
Ireland, New Zealand and Latvia. This year, the program will have four
returning Merola participants: Aviva Fortunata, Jacqueline Piccolino and Joseph
Lattanzi--participants in the 2012 Merola Opera Program--and Timothy Cheung who
participated in the program in 2011.

The 2013 Merola summer artists will participate in an
intensive 11-week training program--12 weeks for the apprentice coaches and the
apprentice stage director--which will include master classes with opera
luminaries such as Warren Jones, Jane Eaglen, Martin Katz, John DeMain and Neil
Shicoff along with San Francisco Opera Center Director of Musical Studies Mark
Morash (Merola ’87). Guest teachers such as Steven Blier, Patrick Carfizzi,
Kevin Murphy and Eric Weimer provide training in voice, foreign languages, operatic
repertory, diction, acting and stage movement. Merola members will enjoy the
opportunity to sit in on select master classes for a behind-the-scenes look at
the training process.

Performance is a key element of the program throughout the
summer and participants will appear in public performances during the Merola
Opera Program summer festival, which includes two staged operas and two scenes
concerts. The 2013 festival will open with Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, directed by Peter
Kazaras and conducted by Mark Morash. Performances are 7:30 p.m. Thursday, July
11 and 2 p.m. Saturday, July 13 at Everett Auditorium. The season continues
with the Schwabacher Summer Concert, conducted by Kevin Murphy and directed by
Roy Rallo. The concert will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 18 at
Everett Auditorium and 2 p.m. Saturday, July 20 in a free outdoor concert at
Yerba Buena Gardens. W.A. Mozart’s Le
nozze di Figaro, directed by Robin Guarino and conducted by Xian Zhang,
will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, August 1 and 2 p.m. Saturday August 3
at Everett Auditorium. The festival concludes with the annual Merola Grand
Finale, conducted by John DeMain and directed by apprentice stage director
George Cederquist, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, August 17 on the main stage in the
magnificent War Memorial Opera House.

One of the world’s most prestigious young artist training
programs, the Merola Opera Program was founded in 1957 and has since served as
a proving ground for thousands of artists, including nine internationally
acclaimed singers and one stage director appearing with the San Francisco Opera
this summer and fall: Meredith Arwady (Merola ’02 & ’03), Susannah Biller
(’09), William Burden (’91), Jose Maria Condemi (’99 & ‘00), Catherine Cook
(’90), Daniela Mack (’07), Lucas Meachem (’03), Patricia Racette (’88), Alek
Shrader (’07) and Dolora Zajick (’83).

For more information about Merola, please visit
www.merola.org or phone (415) 551-6299.

AOP (American Opera Projects), The Edna St. Vincent Millay
Society, ClaverackLanding, and Symphony Space co-present a world premiere
performance of Beauty Intolerable, a
collection of love songs composed by Sheila Silver based on the poetry of
iconoclast and libertine Edna St. Vincent Millay and performed by a trio of
operatic chanteuses. The songs are accompanied with poetry recitations by
actresses Tyne Daly (June 8) and Tandy Cronyn (June 13). The song cycle will be
presented on June 8 at 6 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church: 4th & Warren
Streets, Hudson, NY 12534. A Manhattan premiere follows on June 13 at 7:30 PM
at Leonard Nimoy Thalia at Symphony Space. Tickets will be available through
the venues' Web sites. A limited number of tickets to the Symphony Space
performance which include VIP seating and a reception with the artists are
available for $75 at AOP's website.

The concert will feature soprano Lauren Flanigan (La
Scala, Santa Fe, Metropolitan and New York City Operas), mezzo-soprano Deanne Meek (Barcelona's Gran
Teatre del Liceu, Metropolitan Opera), and soprano Risa Renae Harman (New York
City Opera, Glimmerglass Opera), with Kelly Horsted and Christopher Cooley on
piano. Each performance is accompanied with poetry recitations by guest
actresses Tyne Daly (Cagney & Lacey
and Judging Amy), and Tandy Cronyn (Once Upon a Time in America and The Story Lady).

From May 29th on
YouTube: Experience Anderson & Roe’s Breathtaking New Film of Stravinsky’s
The Rite of Spring for Piano Duo

Boundary-breaking pianists mark the centenary of
Stravinsky’s epoch-defining work with their most ambitious music video yet.

Classical pianists Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe are
different. A piano duo who have attracted legions of new fans with their
virtuosic and acclaimed arrangements of popular hits (such as their “Billie
Jean” cover or their Star Wars Fantasy), they are musicians who bring the care
and stunning imagination of brilliant indie filmmakers to their YouTube music
videos, pushing the form forward. Case in point: their Schubert Lied-turned-horror-film
Der Erlkönig – which, as we go to
press, has just been nominated for an Emmy Award.

If they attract full houses across the U.S. and
internationally with their live shows, they have made an art of presenting
classical music on YouTube, producing and directing videos that have been
viewed by millions. “We cater our performances to the venue, whether it be a
concert hall or online, and as such, we design our YouTube videos to potently
deliver the spirit of the music in a bustling graphic environment,” says
Anderson. But even they have never previously attempted anything on the scale
of The Rite Of Spring.

To be released in segments (as it is composed), one every
two weeks starting from the date of the work’s centenary, Anderson and Roe’s Rite takes the viewer on an epic journey
but one that finally mirrors the primeval nature of the work itself. Starting
in traditional concert trappings, the performers become gradually sucked into a
ritualistic spiral that sets them immersed in a troupe of dancers, crawled on
by insects, lost in a hallucinatory world, naked in the ocean, or alongside an
antique instrument ablaze in the desert. What is real? What is imaginary? One
thing is for sure - theirs is a striking, strident view of music that ripped
apart the culture of its time, and this film proves it can still unsettle and
thrill us today. In this year of the Rite’s
centenary, this interpretation will leave a mark--a scar?--and, perhaps, help
to redefine it.

Berkeley Symphony
Receives National Endowment for the Arts Grant to Support Music in the Schools
Program

National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Acting Chairman Joan
Shigekawa announced today that Berkeley Symphony is one of 817 nonprofit
organizations nationwide to receive an NEA Art Works grant. Berkeley Symphony
is recommended for a $12,500 grant to support their 2013-2014 Music in the
Schools program.

Since 1992, Berkeley Symphony’s Music in the Schools
program, in partnership with the Berkeley Unified School District, has provided
a comprehensive, hands-on and age-appropriate music curriculum to elementary
school students in Berkeley. This award-winning program includes more than 20
interactive in-school concerts and hundreds of classroom musician visits. In
addition, Berkeley Symphony will continue to present its Family Concerts: “Meet
the Symphony” on Saturday, November 2, 2013, and “I’m a Performer” on Saturday,
April 12, 2014. The latter concert is a community collaboration in which both
adults and children are invited to perform with the Orchestra under the baton
of Education Director and Conductor Ming Luke.

Acting Chairman Shigekawa said, "The National
Endowment for the Arts is proud to support these exciting and diverse arts
projects that will take place throughout the United States. Whether it is
through a focus on education, engagement, or innovation, these projects all
contribute to vibrant communities and memorable opportunities for the public to
engage with the arts."

“I am delighted that our Music in the Schools program has
been recognized for its importance and benefit to the local arts community,”
said Berkeley Symphony Executive Director René Mandel . “I want to thank the
National Endowment for the Arts for their generous support which enables us to
continue our commitment to providing the highest quality of musical education
and exposure to thousands of children and their families.”

In August 2012, the NEA received 1,547 eligible
applications for Art Works grants requesting more than $80 million in funding.
Art Works grants support the creation of art that meets the highest standards
of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong
learning in the arts, and the strengthening of communities through the arts.
The 817 recommended NEA grants total $26.3 million and span 13 artistic
disciplines and fields. Applications were reviewed by panels of outside experts
convened by NEA staff and each project was judged on its artistic excellence
and artistic merit.

For a complete listing of projects recommended for Art
Works grant support, please visit the NEA Web site at arts.gov.

--Karen Ames Communications

Seattle Symphony
Board of Directors and Musicians Approve New Contract

Balanced Budget for
2011–2012 Financial Year, Including Record Fundraising Results

The Seattle Symphony announced today that its Board of
Directors and its Musicians have ratified a new collective bargaining agreement
through August 31, 2015. The agreement, reached after 15 months of
negotiations, will enable the organization to continue its journey of artistic
growth under Music Director Ludovic Morlot, expand its engagement with young
people and communities, increase the size of its digital footprint, and set a
path for long-term financial stability.

The financial terms include concessions in musicians’
salaries for the remainder of the 2012–2013 season, a move to a more economical
healthcare plan, and a temporary reduction in the size of the orchestra. This
will be followed by salary and pension increases in subsequent years and the
gradual restoration of vacant positions. The new contract includes a
significant new electronic media agreement that will allow the launch of a new
series of live recordings online and on CD, and provide unprecedented audio and
audio visual access, via the Internet, to rehearsals and concerts for public engagement,
promotional, educational and community purposes. Additionally, the new contract
provides for flexibility in operating procedures that will aid in scheduling
rehearsals and performances as the Symphony continues to experiment with
concert formats and times of day. It will also enable the organization to reach
increased numbers of students for next season’s launch of the major new
education program Link Up: Seattle Symphony, in which students play and sing
along with the Symphony from their seats in Benaroya Hall, following
preparatory in-school sessions led by teaching artists and based on a
specifically developed curriculum from Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute.

Seattle Symphony Board of Directors Chair Leslie Jackson
Chihuly stated, “We express our deep gratitude to the entire orchestra for its
willingness to work creatively with us on this agreement, and for again
agreeing to make concessions. Settling the contract is a great step forward and
allows the entire organization to move toward our shared goals, both
artistically and financially. I want to acknowledge and share our deep
appreciation for the hard work on the part of so many involved in the
negotiations over many months. This agreement provides the strength and impetus
needed for us to advance toward ever greater achievements.”

--Ashlyn Damm

Washington National
Opera Premieres D.J. Sparr’s Vibrant New Opera, Approaching Ali, Saturday,
June 8 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, June 9 at 2:00 p.m. at the Kennedy Center's
Terrace Theater

Eclectic composer D.J. Sparr teams up with celebrated
sportswriter and memoirist Davis Miller, crackerjack librettist Mark Campbell
and the Washington National Opera for this compelling new one-hour opera that
tells the true story of how Muhammad Ali inspires one young man to turn his
life around. The two premiere performances will take place at the Kennedy
Center’s Terrace Theater on Saturday, June 8 at 7:30pm and Sunday, June 9 at
2pm. Tickets are $30.

This June, Washington National Opera presents the first
fully-staged opera commission created for its American Opera Initiative: Approaching Ali from the composer D.J.
Sparr, whose mellifluous music “spouts streams of color” (San Jose Mercury News) and embodies “the boundary-erasing spirit of
today’s new-music world” (New York Times).

When WNO announced this ambitious new program to build a
repertoire of original American-themed operas, Sparr didn’t hesitate to contact
the man that had sublet his Richmond home the previous summer. That man was
Davis Miller, author of the famous memoir The Tao of Muhammad Ali, which
recounts how Miller transcended his past traumas with the help of Ali, his
childhood hero and one of our most revered athletes.

The pair won the inaugural WNO commission and hooked up
with superlative librettist Mark Campbell (whose credits include Kevin Puts’s
2012 Pulitzer-winning opera Silent Night) to create the hour-long opera,
Approaching Ali. Cutting from the transformative meeting between Ali and
Miller, then a wayward adult, to difficult memories of Miller’s boyhood in
North Carolina, the story explores the themes of parents and children, loss,
bullying, hero-worship, friendship and redemption.

Musically, Approaching Ali draws on myriad influences,
with Sparr citing works as wide-ranging as Orff’s Der Mond, Bernstein’s Trouble
in Tahiti, Britten, Tom Petty, dharma drumming, and Appalachian fiddle
music. Clearly, Sparr’s pop-Romantic aesthetic, shaped as much by his rock
roots as his conservatory rigor, is in full bloom. His iconoclastic style, in
which a vital, shimmering quality propels his undeniable lyricism from the
tangible to the magical, is a perfect match for this uplifting story.

Andris Nelsons
Appointed Music Director Designate of the Boston Symphony Orchestra

Andris Nelsons has been appointed as Music Director
Designate for the Boston Symphony Orchestra from the start of the 2013/14
season and will officially take up the position of Music Director in 2014/15.

Andris Nelsons is currently Music Director of the City of
Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, where he was appointed in 2008 as a relatively
unknown young conductor. Since then he has delighted audiences in Birmingham and
built a global reputation as one of the world’s most exciting conductors.

Stephen Maddock, Chief Executive of the CBSO, said: “This
appointment to one of the world’s most distinguished orchestras is a real
accolade for Andris, and we are delighted for him. During his time at the CBSO,
he has proved himself to be amongst the very best conductors in the world, and
it is testament to his extraordinary talent that he has secured this major role
at such a young age. Of course, we also believe this is a reflection of
Birmingham’s continued excellent taste in Music Directors!

“Andris’s rolling contract with the CBSO is currently in
place until the end of the 2014/15 season, and there will be no change to his
commitment to Birmingham during this time. It is not unusual for a conductor of
Andris’s stature to hold more than one position, and we will make an
announcement about future seasons beyond 2015 later this year. In the meantime,
we all congratulate him on his success and look forward to our next concerts with
him in May and June, including an eight-concert European tour.”

Andris Nelsons said: “I am very proud to be appointed to
this great orchestra, and I also look forward to lots more wonderful concerts
with my beloved CBSO.”

--Ruth Green, CBSO

Application
Deadline Extended for Composers & the Voice 2013-2014

Due to overwhelming demand, the deadline for applications
to AOP's Composers & the Voice program has been extended.

C&V Artistic Director Steven Osgood w composer Hannah
Lash The Composers & the Voice Workshop Series is a competitive biannual
fellowship offered to composers & composer/librettist teams. Created and
led by Composers & the Voice Artistic Director Steven Osgood, six composers
or composer/librettist teams will be selected for a year-long fellowship,
working with the company's Resident Ensemble of Singers and Artistic Team. The primary focus of Composers & the
Voice is to give composers and librettists experience working collaboratively
with singers on writing for the voice and opera stage.

C&V fellows

Compose solo works and opera scenes in closed workshop
sessions with the AOP Resident Ensemble of Singers

Participate in "Skill-Building Sessions" in
acting, improv games, and libretto development

Gain in-depth and firsthand knowledge of how singers build
characters, act in scenes and sing text.

Have their compositions featured in two public
performances: First Glimpse, a
concert of songs in spring 2014, and Six
Scenes, an evening of short opera scenes in Fall 2014.

Over the years there have been a number of piano
transcriptions of Stravinsky’s Rite of
Spring, including several that Stravinsky himself wrote for two hands and
four. The former the composer used to preview the work for producers and
conductors and the latter he used for rehearsals. So, the new transcription for
solo piano we get here from noted Canadian pianist Jon Kimura Parker is nothing
innovative. It’s just something better, being more complex, more detailed, more
demanding than any piano transcription we’ve yet heard of the Rite, and probably better played in this
world-premiere recording.

Explaining his reasons for the new piano arrangements of
old orchestral scores we hear on the present disc, Mr. Parker says in a liner
note, “When I discovered Stravinsky’s piano duet version, my obsession with
playing this music at the piano began in earnest. I noticed that Stravinsky,
having arranged the duet primarily to facilitate ballet rehearsal, was less
fastidious with details than I had expected. I became engrossed in adding
instrumental lines that had been left out. From there, it was a natural
evolution to try to manage it all myself. The
Rite of Spring has been transcribed for solo piano before, in versions so
bare as to be unsatisfying, or so inclusive as to be unplayable. However, it is
well known that Stravinsky often composed at the piano, and many sections in The Rite bear this out. Petrouchka (1911) presented a different
challenge, in that Stravinsky had already created a virtuoso solo piano suite
from selected moments of the ballet. Upon reflection I chose to honor the
tragic conclusion of the story by transcribing the ballet in its original and
complete form.”

Listening to any transcription of a familiar work may take
a little getting used to, and these adaptions of Stravinsky for the keyboard
may be an acquired taste. Personally, I miss the vibrant percussion of a full
orchestra. However, there is no denying that in Mr. Parker’s hands, The Rite, especially, reveals new depths
of clarity and detail without losing much of its rhythmic pulse. This is no
doubt a tribute not only to Parker’s fine piano arrangement but to his dynamic
piano playing.

Russian-born American composer Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
wrote The Rite of Spring for the 1913
Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, where the music scandalized
the country. To be fair, it had probably as much to do with Vaslav Nijinsky’s
choreography as with the music. Anyway, Mr. Parker’s piano score brings out all
the primitive strains in the piece as well as its quiet lyricism.

Parker manages to capture all of Stravinsky’s rowdy,
sensual, rhythmic vitality in his piano rendition. Going in, I had some minor reservations about whether or not he
really could pull it off. But the man is amazing. His virtuosity is dazzling
and his expressive technique remarkable. You won’t be more than five minutes
into the album before you forget there’s no orchestra involved. It’s almost
uncanny how Parker is able to recreate the orchestral textures and harmonic
nuances of the music. If you are fond of The
Rite but have grown tired of all the new recordings of it sounding alike,
you owe it to yourself to try this one; it’s like nothing you’ve probably heard
before.

Stravinsky composed his ballet Petrouchka in 1910–11 and revised it in 1947. It tells the story of
a traditional Russian puppet, Petrouchka, made of straw and sawdust, who comes
to life and develops a life of his own, complete with emotions. The composer
wrote it just a year after The Firebird
and two years before The Rite, so he
was flying high.

Petrouchka
benefits a little less from Parker’s new transcription, probably because the
music itself, while exceptionally melodious, is less innovative than The Rite and because the composer
himself wrote a really good piano suite of the music with which many people are
already familiar. Nevertheless, Parker’s complete piano rendering contains a
good deal of color and excitement, and with the performer’s brilliant finger
work the tale comes to life with passion and pathos.

Stravinsky wrote some spectacular ballet music, and Jon
Kimura Parker’s piano transcriptions and his playing of them do both scores
justice.

Mr. Parker recorded The
Rite and Petrouchka for his own
recording label in 2009 and 2012 at Stude Concert Hall, The Shephard School of
Music, Rice University, Houston, Texas. The piano sound is rich, warm,
mellifluous, and resonant. Its mellow bloom accompanies a strong impact from
the keys, well caught by the audio engineer. Highs ring out vividly, and low
notes make their presence known. It’s
the kind of big, brawny, yet intimate piano sound that fits the music
perfectly. It lights up the room.

John J. Puccio

About the Author

Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on The Big John and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.

Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (moviemet.com, formerly DVDTOWN) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.

When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.

So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job.

Contact Information

Readers with polite, courteous, helpful letters may send them to pucciojj@gmail.com.